A minor cock-up, but mine own
Last night, Paul and I had a lovely dive from Aquanauts boat, on a nice scenic reef just off Shagstone Rock, with dogfish, starfish, urchins, a big old cannonball and very good viz. Bloody cold, though.
The time came for blob deployment so, as I badly need the practice, I got mine out. I never seem to have enough hands, and it had been suggested to me that putting the reel on the seabed while inflating the blob might make life easier. So, I placed my reel on the sand in front of me, swapped regs, held the blob open and purged my reg. When I could feel the blob tugging, I removed my reg and let the bag go. Because the reg was upside-down, the water was full of bubbles, so I couldn't see what was going on, but I remember thinking how much easier the whole procedure was, not having to hold onto my reel while I sorted my regs out. I swapped back to my main reg, the bubbles cleared and......nothing. No reel, no smb, just me, Paul and a starfish on the bare seabed.
Guess who forgot to unlock the reel.
Paul said he couldn't see much of my face so couldn't judge my expression, but apparently I stared at the seabed for a few seconds, looked around and behind me, then above me in a 'Huh?' kind of way.
Back on (Paul's) line at 5m I was laughing so hard I was shaking. Paul thought I was shivering, but looked at my eyes and realised I was p*ssing myself laughing as I kept imagining how it must've looked. He said he noticed I hadn't unlocked the reel but didn't intervene as he didn't want to interfere and hoped I'd spot the error for myself. He went to grab the reel when he realised I wasn't going to unlock it, but it was too late.
Of course, Doug Allen wasted no time telling the whole boatload of lads (me being the only girlie) about my stupidity as we had to detour to collect my blob and reel which were heading to France. At least the bloody thing had air in it, though, which makes a change.